Sam Hunt (poet)
Samuel Percival Maitland Hunt CNZM QSM (born 4 July 1946), is a New Zealand poet, especially known for his public performances of poetry of his own and many others' poetry.HUNT, Sam He has been referred to as New Zealand's best-known poet.Making Tracks - Hazard Online Life Family Hunt was born and grew up at Castor Bay on the North Shore of Auckland. His commitment to writing poetry probably came from his mother. Hunt's father, a barrister, was 60 when Hunt was born (his mother was 30). Yet Hunt loved his unconventional parents and "early poems featuring his father remain amongst his best".Paul Miller, "Sam Hunt", in Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (eds), The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1998, pp. 249 and 250. Hunt has an older brother, Jonathan, and both of them have an older half-brother, Alexander Hunt. Education Hunt was educated at St. Peter's College, Auckland, which he attended from 1958 to 1963. At St. Peter's, Hunt's individualism came into conflict with the Christian Brother's authoritarianism and puritanism. (He has said that he was strapped at the age of 14 for reciting a poem by James K. Baxter which had sexual imagery, in the classroom.Hunt's classmate and fellow poet Terry Locke has commented on this incident in [http://www.hyperpoetics.ac.nz/Genres/LockeReviews/BaxterHunt.htm his review of James K. Baxter: Poems selected and introduced by Sam Hunt, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2008.] (accessed 20 February 2012) ) Life was not made easier by a bad stutter, and poems working through the tensions and fantasies of adolescence became a form of release. Some of his earliest poems were published in the St Peter's College annual magazines.St. Peter's College Magazines, 1963 and 1964 Despite problems at school, Hunt, who was a good sprinter and diver, did not leave until asked to. He benefited, in his final year, from having poet Ken Arvidson as his English master, and he obtained University Entrance. Hunt has said that "if Mr Arvidson ... had not come to the school, I would not have lasted St Peter's as long as I did, and I'd just turned sixteen when I left. He introduced me to poets like Gordon Challis, who I've gone on loving ever since".Sam Hunt, Backroads, Charting a Poet's Life, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, 2009, p. 24. Ken Arvidson endowed a poetry prize at St Peter's and this was awarded to Sam Hunt in 1963. One of Hunt's most reproduced poems is Brother Lynch, a poem about a St Peter's College teacher, Brother J.B. Lynch, who was sympathetic to the young Hunt.Sam Hunt: Selected Poems, Penguin Books, Auckland, 1987, p. 63. An annual literature competition at St Peter's College is named after Sam Hunt, and he has acted as its judge.Bronwen Sell, "From black sheep to honoured guest", NZ Herald, 20 October 1999 In the period 1964 to 1967, Hunt oscillated between Auckland and Wellington, attending university in both cities. Along with brief periods truck-driving and panel-beating, Hunt graduated from teachers college and taught briefly before deciding, in the late 1960s, that poetry was his vocation. Poetry career Hunt was amongst the younger New Zealand poets who began to be published in the late 1960s. He was originally published in Landfall in 1967.Elizabeth Caffin, "Poetry 1945-1990", in Terry Sturm (ed), The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 418. Hunt and other young poets were interested in daily linguistic usage and in the natural units of speech rather than any special poetic language. This expressed itself in a restoration of oral aspects of poetry and a stress on performance.Caffin, p. 420. From the late 1960s until 1997, Hunt lived in a number of locations around the Pauatahanui inlet near Wellington. Many of the events in each dwelling are described in his verse, notably Bottle Creek (where he was joined by his famous black and white sheepdog, "Minstrel"), Battle Hill (where his older son, Tom, was born), Death's Corner (formerly the farmhouse of a Mr Death) and then back to a boatshed in Paremata. Other poems (see above) are set in Porirua nearby. In 1997 Hunt moved to Waiheke Island near Auckland. He now lives in Kaipara in Northland with his younger son, Alf. Hunt has been a central figure in New Zealand literature since the publication of his earliest mature work, From Bottle Creek: Selected poems. 1967-1969, in 1969, published when the poet was aged just 23. He was a prolific writer in the 1970s through 1990s. By focusing on the public performance aspects of poetry, Hunt was the "young poet" who most successfully reached a wider audience. Hunt pointed out how his poetry showed up the intellectuality of his contemporaries and their inclination to see popular culture as input rather than output.Caffin, pp. 427 and 428. Much of Hunt's output is in a style similar to those of Denis Glover, Alistair Campbell, and James K. Baxter.http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/huntsam.html These poets were personal friends as well as influences on Hunt. Baxter was particularly important to, and wrote many poems for, Hunt. In one of the most important of these poems, Letter to Sam Hunt, Baxter provided advice to the young Hunt. Hunt frequently delivers Baxter poems in his performances and has claimed to have committed 200 of them to memory. Many of Hunt's performance tours have been undertaken with another poet and "fellow exuberant", Gary McCormick. After a publishing gap of nearly a decade, Hunt has published in most years since 2007. Hunt's book sales far exceed most New Zealand poets. Icon Hunt's distinctive appearance - tall and rangy, usually wearing drainpipe trousers ("Foxton straights" he has called them) with vests and open-chested shirts, with long hair curling wildly above a weathered face - is complemented by the familiar gravelly drawl, the rhythmic, sometimes staccato and sometimes incantatory quality of his recitation (often tapping his fingers or flicking a hand to emphasise the poetic beat) and the execution of occasional small dance-like steps of concentration. These have all made him one of New Zealand's most recognisable figures. Once, almost as well-known was his long-time travelling companion, his dog Minstrel. "A bard in the truest sense of the itinerant minstrel, Hunt's turangawaewae 'one's own turf', literally: 'a place to stand' is the public bar. Touring the pubs with bands of musos"a musician, especially one overly concerned with technique; an avid music fan, especially one who has expensive stereo equipment", Oxford English Dictionaries definition of "muso" (Retrieved 20 August 2013) and poets, he is himself one of the national icons".Oliver Stead, Art Icons of New Zealand:Lines in the Sand, David Bateman, 2008, p. 71. Hunt is also a familiar figure in New Zealand figurative art, notably in paintings by Robin White, such as in Sam Hunt at the Portobello Pub,[http://pogostick.co.nz/would-you-let-a-baby-wee-on-you/ Robin White, Sam Hunt at the Portobello Pub, Pogostick website] (retrieved 17 January 2012). painted in 1978. In 2012, the artist Dick Frizzell completed a series of paintings of Sam Hunt poems. At the opening of the exhibition of those paintings on 7 February 2012, Frizzell said that he and Hunt had, in their respective paintings and poems, committed the ultimate "sin", the "sin of being understood".[http://www.pageblackiegallery.co.nz/exhibition.php?exhibitionid=124 Page Blackie Gallery, Exhibition: Dick Frizzell, Painting The Hunt] (retrieved 7 February 2012) Sarah Catherall, "Frizzell and Hunt team up for exhibition", Dominion Post, 16 February 2012, (retrieved 16 February 2012) Writing Many of his poems are characteristically expressions of feeling in a single surface line which leads to a poignant close. His own experience is his single subject; moments in his life, love and its loss, and poems about his father, mother and sons. A number of Hunt's works share common themes and characters, such as the poems Porirua Friday Night and Girl with Black Eye in Grocer's Shop, both of which feature the same female character. "Everything Hunt writes is geared for personal performance: his lyrics are deliberately uncomplicated and colloquial; their traditional forms and regular rhythms allow 'the stories and myths be fleshed and invested with energy and power' ". Critics have noted Hunt's "unabashed romanticism". As Hunt wrote, Romantics, so they say,/ don't ever die! (second "Song"). Hunt has been called "a kind of "laconic" Jack Kerouac" - whose poems (he has called them "roadsongs") are direct and simple, "surprised by their own powerful emotion". His romanticism has been compared with that of another New Zealand poet, Hone Tuwhare and their romanticism has been credited with contributing to the popularity of both poets.Caffin, p. 406. Hunt has a high regard for other 20th-century English language poets such as William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas (Hunt particularly loves Thomas' poem, "In my Craft or Sullen Art," which he sees as speaking to his own mission as a poet; he has said that he sometimes gives his occupation (to Customs Officers and such) as "sullen artist"). He also loves foreign language poets such as the Italian, Salvatore Quasimodo, and the Hungarian poet Jozsef Attila (Hunt often recites Attila's poem A Hetedik or The SeventhAttila József, The Seventh (A hetedik) (retrieved 10 February 2011) with which he is familiar in both English and Hungarian (having heard it as a child often delivered by a Hungarian friend of his family)). Hunt also admires the work of Bob Dylan amongst many other poets. As well as his own poems, Hunt, in his performances, recites poems by all these poets, whether famous, obscure or anonymous (from sometimes unlikely sources, for example The War Cry). It is the quality of poems that is most important to him. Recognition Hunt was awarded a Robert Burns fellowship at Otago University in 1975, and spent 1976 in Dunedin. He was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for community service in the 1985 Queen's Birthday Honours[http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/50155/supplements/1 London Gazette (supplement), No. 50155, 14 June 1985]. Retrieved 26 January 2013. and in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry.Queen's Birthday Honours List 2010. Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Retrieved 28 January 2013. In 2012 he received a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. In popular culture In April 2009, New Zealand musician David Kilgour, of cult band The Clean, released an album on which poems by Hunt were reinvented as song lyrics.http://www.davidkilgour.com/falling.htm Publications Poetry *''From Bottle Creek: Selected poems, 1967-1969''. Wellington: Poetry Magazine, 1969; Wellington: Alister Taylor, 1972. *''Bracken Country''. Wellington: Glenbervie Press, 1971. *''Roadsong Paekakariki''. Paremata, NZ: Triple P Press, 1973. *''South Into Winter: Poems and Roadsongs''. Wellington; Alister Taylor, 1973. *''Time To Ride''. Martinborough, NZ: Alister Taylor, 1975. *''Drunkard's Garden''. Wellington; Hampson Hunt, 1977 1978. *''Poems for the Eighties : New poems''. Wellington: Wai-te-ata Press, 1979. *''Collected Poems 1963–1980''. Harmondsworth, UK, & New York: Penguin, 1980. *''Running Scared''. Christchurch, NZ: Whitcoulls, 1982. *''Approaches To Paremata''. Auckland & New York: Penguin, 1985. *''Selected Poems'' (foreword by Michael Richards). Malvern, Vic: Robert Anderson, 1987. *''Making Tracks: A selected 50 poems''. Christchurch, NZ: Hazard Press, 1991. *''Down the Backbone''. Auckland; Hodder Moa Beckett, 1995. *''Doubtless: New and selected poems''. Nelson, NZ: Craig Potton Publishing, 2008. *''Chords, and other Poems''. Nelson, NZ: Craig Potton Publishing, 2011. *''Knucklebones: Poems, 1962-2012''. Nelson, NZ: Craig Potton Publishing, 2012. Non-fiction *''Roaring Forties'' (with Gary McCormick; photos by John McDermott). Auckland: Hodder Moa Beckett, 1995. *''Backroads, Charting a Poet's Life'' (autobiography). Nelson, NZ: Craig Potton Publishing, 2009. Edited *James K. Baxter, Poems. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Sam Hunt, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Centre Inc. Web, Mar. 29, 2014. See also *List of New Zealand poets References Notes External links ;Poems *"Lines for a New Year" *"Tomorrow or Today" (2) *Sam Hunt at the New Zealand Electronic Texts Collection (6 poems) ;Audio / video *Sam Hunt (b. 1946) at The Poetry Archive *Sam Hunt at YouTube ;Books *Sam Hunt at Amazon.com *Sam Hunt at the New Zealand Literature File ;About *Sam Hunt at Craig Potton Publishing *Sam Hunt at Speakers New Zealand *Hunt, Sam at the New Zealand Book Council *Sam Hunt Official website *Sam Hunt at NZ OnScreen *The Sam Hunt Interview at Stuff Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:New Zealand poets Category:People educated at St Peter's College, Auckland Category:Recipients of the Queen's Service Medal Category:Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit Category:Kaipara District Category:People from the Northland Region Category:St Peter's College, Auckland Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Performance poets Category:Poets